When President Donald Trump ordered an armada of naval vessels, fighter planes, bombers and hightech surveillance drones to the Middle East, he thought he had the answer to decades of tension and terr...

By WILLIAM M. COTTER President and CEO Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association National Sunshine Week, March 15-21, is a time to highlight the importance of open, transparent government and to call attenti...

SUNSHINE WEEK IS AN ANNUAL March observation that celebrates the importance of shedding light in the darkness, and the Mon Valley Independent takes the Sunshine Act, the public’s right to know and the...

The editorial department of the Mon Valley Independent encourages letters to the editor. Letters must be no more than 500 words, must be in good taste and must include the author’s name, town of resid...

Until last year, for some 46 years, Iran enjoyed a North Korea-like reputation in the heart of the Middle East: always unpredictable, reckless, dangerous, inevitably to be nuclear, self-destructive, a...

THERE ARE THINGS you think about a college student needing to pay for at school. The obvious cost is the tuition. The average cost of two semesters at a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education s...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Since starting a war with Iran caused oil and gasoline prices to spike, President Donald Trump has pivoted from a focus on keeping energy prices low to trying to paint high oil price...

It’s great to see curtains going up. All over the Mon Valley things are a little dramatic right now. It is the height of spring musical season, and in middle schools and high schools across the region...

Let’s state the obvious: We’re at war with Iran. My evidence? Turn on your TV. U.S. forces, working with Israel, killed the supreme leader of Iran and many of his top aides. We sunk Iran’s navy and de...

AS ELECTION REFORMS have become a key issue across the nation, independent voters in Pennsylvania still cannot cast a ballot in primary elections. That’s because Pennsylvania’s election law shuts out ...

The single biggest reason Donald Trump won the last election boils down to two words: gas and groceries. Joe Biden’s failure to control prices on those key commodities enabled Trump, who has never won...

To the Editor: Whatever happened to cocaine in the White House (the most protected home on earth)? Joe Biden was president and his drug-addicted son, Hunter, was in residence. Cameras were and still a...

FRAUD IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS that happens to other people. That’s what we want to believe. That’s true of plenty of bad stuff in life. Fires, crimes, cancer — all of that is easier to accept when we d...

Recently, the usual suspects became very excited by what they viewed as an explosive revelation in the Jeffrey Epstein case. The Justice Department, they alleged, had suppressed an account of a woman ...

is the moment This when total war meets the fog of war. Not in tiny steps but in one great leap, the United States has triggered, and itself soon will experience, a frightful period of total war that ...

WESTMORELAND COUNTY has an overtime problem. TribLive reporting shows regular reliance on overtime has pushed some employees’ earnings far beyond their base salaries. In 2025 alone, county workers mad...

To the Editor: On Jan. 20, meinfuhrer Trump and his fascist cabinet and corrupt appointees took control of our government. They immediately, upon taking power, spit on our constitution and bill of rig...

WHEN WE WATCH WAR unfold on television, there is fear and uncertainty. But there also can be the detachment of distance. It is not a comfort, but it can be insulating to know what is happening is so f...

To the Editor: It was a very shameful display the way the Democrats behaved at the recent State of the Union address. From those elected who chose not to be there, to holding up a protest sign, to not...

War is the use of arms to settle differences— tribal, political, religious, cultural, and material—between organized groups. It is unchanging. The general laws of armed conflict stays immutable, given...